Last updated on August 24th, 2022
Welcome back to another episode of Into The Airbnb, where we talk with Airbnb hosts about their short-term rental experience.
Today’s guest is Jefferey Lambert, an Airbnb host who owns and manages a unit in Albemarle, North Carolina. In this episode, he will share how he found out about leveraging the unit as much as possible by doing market research and paying special attention to the market’s need for big event venues.
This episode is sponsored by Airbtics, short-term rental analytics for high return investment, comprehensive data for insights, ideas and inspiration. Go to app.airbtics.com to find precise Airbnb data such as occupancy rate, revenue, average daily rate and so on. So, without further ado, let’s get into it! So how did you get started in Airbnb?
Into The Airbnb Podcast S2 EP 31: High demand for wedding venues in Albemarle, North Carolina made this Airbnb unit successful: learn about your market needs and take advantage of it
You can also listen to this Into The Airbnb Podcast Episode on Otter.
Delia:
So how did you get started in Airbnb?
Jefferey Lambert:
Well, I’m not doing it as a business or a job. I think the best way to put it is, are you familiar with the expression, having your cake and eating it too? I didn’t want to have to sell that house, but intellectually, I couldn’t justify keeping it. You know, if I could have it paid for itself, then I can justify intellectually keeping it, why would I sell it if it’s paying for itself and use it when I want to. So I’m intentionally spending any money that comes in, from rentals back on the property to improve it, you know, yard work, put ceilings in the basement, you know, all kinds of maintenance and home improvement type things. It looked as good as now. I’m so proud when I pull up at the driveway when we spend the weekend there.
Delia:
So you don’t spend anything so far in the property?
Jefferey Lambert:
Oh, no, no, I’ve been spending a lot of money on it. But all the money is coming from the rentals, from the short-term rentals through Airbnb. All of it, I’m spending back on the property.
Delia:
So it pays for itself, it’s great! I’ve also seen the pictures of your listing, is really beautiful.
Jefferey Lambert:
I could not be more proud of that place. I designed that house and built it myself. Well, I hired carpenters and electricians to do the work. But I designed it myself and I built it in the footprint of my grandparents house, I had their house moved out and built that house there and that was in 2013. And I built it at the time I was married coming up on 30 years and I thought it would make everything better with the marriage. Well, she divorced me two years later and I had to leave the house for a year and a half, two years while we were going through the divorce. Then I had to take money out of my retirement to buy her out of the house, so I didn’t lose it. And then I lived there for a year by myself, a year and a half and spent all my weekends doing yard work. You know, it’s 3800 square feet heated an 800 square foot, two car garage underneath it and an 1100 square foot wraparound porch all under the same roof, that’s a lot for one person. Then the yard, I’ve seen pictures of the yard. I would spend all my weekends doing yard work and was still getting behind. Then I met Betsy, we met September 2019. She’s got a 550 square foot cabin out in the foothills of South Carolina, she owns no payment on it and I’m thinking why am I living here you know, but I couldn’t sell it. I just emotionally attached to the place. I looked at long term rentals. And it was difficult to, I’m not on a lake, I’m not in the mountains, I’m not at the beach, it’s just out in the country. So to find someone that would want to rent it long-term for what I needed just to cover the cost. What wasn’t what happened? I actually I went on the internet just looking out on my phone, “how do I, you know, do a listing with Airbnb? How does that work?” and I go through all these questions and then it says congratulations, you’ve listed your home, now add pictures and I’m like what? So I find some pictures I had on my phone to be put on and then I get a booking for Christmas. Now Betsy and I’ve been dating for two months. Well, September, October. We met in September, this is December. I look at Betsy and I’m like “are you serious about moving in together?” and she goes “oh hell yeah”. So we loaded up my jeep with everything I could get out of my house, that was my personal stuff. Put the rest inside the garage and we spent a week getting it ready. When we started I had three towels to have match. I had pillowcases as curtains on the windows downstairs. We spent a tonne of that week way more than I made it just buying towels, just getting it ready for guests emptied out all the closets, all the dressers, you know, we bought everything we needed, towels, curtains, Betsy helped me with all that. Then we started getting bookings after booking and I was shocked. I had no idea it would book.
Delia:
How come? Did you not know that your area is popular on Airbnb? Or is it not? It’s just your listing?
Jefferey Lambert:
It is. There’s not a lot of listings out that way and most of the listings are not, because it’s a five bedroom house so we can have 16. We list 16, well, 12 guests is what we list, but for five bedrooms on 28. Now again, it’s not on a lake and it’s not in the mountains and it’s not at the beach, it’s just out the country. But we happen to be rather than relatively close to three different wedding venues. So people having weddings, they’re out of town families, three families can stay in my house for about the same money as staying in the Holiday Inn Express in Albemarle. So that’s huge that you had a 1100 square foot wraparound porch. There’s 22 chairs on the porch right now, for people to sit with ceiling fans in the summertime and then their own kitchen. I designed the house as a place for friends and family to gather. We’ve set ourselves there with 40 people at one table in the dining room living room, moved the furniture and put one long table down the middle, you know, there’s no place like that in Albemarle where you can have 20/30 people hanging out under one roof for the weekend. We started getting people wanting to have weddings in the backyard smaller weddings. So I’m thinking if we’re gonna do this, let’s do it right. Now just coming out of a divorce, I didn’t have a lot of capital. So on my credit card, I put it in a parking area beside the households, 50 cars I put in outdoor lighting and all the trees in the backyard so you can light it up at night. I bought 89 yards of mulch at $27 a yard and had my landscaper put it out in the yard for me fix it up nice and we got bookings for weddings. Then the COVID hit and all the bookings started stopping. I still had the money on my credit cards. But then the interest rates dropped and I refinanced and the money I saved refinancing that house covers all of our expenses here at the cabin. Then all these people that had these huge vacations planned during COVID, their own house on 20 acres out in the country sounded really attractive. So I started getting a lot of families coming in and the bookings filled back up. That first year, I think we took in almost, right at $50,000 in bookings in the first year.
Delia:
Is there an estimated amount of investment?
Jefferey Lambert:
Well, keep in mind, my goal when I started this was that the house pays for itself without being more work for me. I wanted to be relieved of having to work in the yard and doing all these you know pressure washing the house and all these maintenance things you have to do with that much property. I wanted that to happen. So my brother does landscaping and I told him, I said “look, I want you to do the house, but don’t make me a deal, whatever your normal rate is, charged me that” and he did. Betsy was doing the cleaning and I was paying her the $180 I have for cleaning fee, which I thought was in line. So it’s done that and that’s my goal. I don’t have to sell it if it’s paying for itself. Now, when I started this, when I refinanced the house was around just over $300,000 is what the market value was. Right now I’ve got a real estate agent calling me wanting to sell it for almost a million dollars and I’m telling him, I don’t want to sell it. So it’s tripled, the value of the property is tripled in three years. So you know, again, when I took my retirement money to buy the house after the divorce, I looked at it as a reinvesting my retirement in the property. But again, I’m still sentimentally attached to this property because that land has been in my family for many generations, my grandparents house was in the same footprint. You know, when I built the house, I took stuff from my grandparents house and my great grandparents house and incorporated it into the new house. The door for the basement that goes into the basement, was the front door on my great grandfather’s house, my parents moved, so a lot of the family heirlooms ended up in that house and they’re still there, we’ve got no place else to put them. So that really is my family home and we use it as a vacation home. But it’s been a sound investment obviously it’s taking in, this year, I’m going to show a profit because I’m taking in just, there’s only so much I can do. I’ve spent thousands of dollars in yard work. The yard has never looked this good. We’ve receipted over four acres of grass the last two years, three years and fertilised it twice a year. I mean, that’s thousands of dollars each time we do it, but the yard never looked this good. So the value of the property itself and not having to sell this piece of property because once I sell it I’ll never get it back. You know, it’s family property. That was my goal and that’s what we’re doing. This year, this April has just worked out to be the biggest month we’ve ever had, there’s five weeks and again, it’s kind of a weekend rental, rarely do we have a booking that does not include the weekend. There are five weekends in April, we normally don’t get a booking in weekdays, it’s a three night minimum, so that normally leaves a couple of days in the middle open, which is fine because it takes time to clean a five bedroom house properly, then we’ve had a few people fill in the weekdays. So this month, we’re taking in almost $10,000 in bookings and I just added it up, my housekeeper and my landscaper is about $2,500. This year is gonna be difficult not to show a profit.
Delia:
Wow, that’s impressive! I think the good thing you’re doing is you know how to take advantage of the listing. I know there are many people out there with property that is this big and maybe people want to rent it out for a wedding, like you said or familiar gatherings and they don’t allow it But the fact that you allow it and their wedding venues around you, that is like a real good way to take advantage of the location of the property and the size of the property. So I get like you’re getting a great revenue.
Jefferey Lambert:
Again, I’m not in a big vacations spot, like the mountains. But I found out that town because there’s no place like it that you can compare it. Airbnb when I first started, they were like $70 a night. Well, 70$ no, I can’t clean it for $70, you know, you can’t clean that house. When the COVID hit the rental place in Albemarle didn’t deliver their chairs and tables anymore. So I bought 90 brand new white folding chairs that we use for outdoor wedding and I bought 10 five foot diameter banquet tables and we were able to store those in the downstairs garage that guests can use, we charge $2 a chair and $10 for the tables, that’s the same price as the Albemarle place, except they’re there, use them or don’t. If you need 20, take 20 If you need 30, take 30 and then whatever they use put back and they can pay for that through the Airbnb app. So we tried to just make it more of a convenience. But it’s been incredibly rewarding. If you read through our reviews, they’re great, but the real heartfelt messages that we’ve gotten in our guest book and we’ve had a young girl, I think she was eight, she met her godparents and caught her first fish at that house. We’ve had families the few times we’ve had weekends that weren’t booked, inevitably, at the last minute, we have a family for a funeral that are coming into town and they need a place to go and we’ve had families have big memorial services in the backyard. And just those type of things. I didn’t expect that I’ve always enjoyed hosting and I’m proud of that property. I love it when other families get to enjoy it like I do. But it’s been incredibly rewarding.
Delia:
I get it completely. I congratulate you for it, it’s really great what you’ve done! By any chance, do you find your area to be any seasonal? Are there any specific months where you don’t get that much bookings or something similar?
Jefferey Lambert:
I’ve looked back over the last couple of years. Typically January, February is the slowest months. The last year by March we were booked up every weekend for the rest of the year. I think we had one weekend in December. But I’ve been blocking July 4th weekend for my family, we have a July 4th party and I blocked a weekend between Thanksgiving and Christmas where all my family comes. This year we’ve got a few extra weekends that aren’t booked. I think there might be four or five weekends right now that aren’t booked. But I’m blocked a week in June, my dad and my mom are celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary and my dad’s turning 80. So we block that week for the house and all of our families meeting there to celebrate their anniversary and my dad’s birthday. The two weeks after that, I’ve a friend that’s getting married and they’re gonna have a big party and they’ve rented it out two weeks in a row. My son and his wife, volunteer at their church youth group and they’re doing it a camp out in the backyard a weekend in May. Those type of things again, I get to do that for people. We’ve had several neighbours on. Now the streets out in the country, there might be 12 driveways and two miles on this road, but we’ve had two neighbours, three neighbours rent the house for a Marines reunion, a birthday party and a wedding and that’s a huge compliment for me, for my neighbours to think that much of that place that they would want to rent it for their events.
Delia:
Because there are many neighbours out there that don’t like Airbnb properties around. So you’re very lucky with that.
Jefferey Lambert:
And you’re right and I’m sensitive to that. All my neighbours know what I’m doing. They all have my number and I’ve let them know if you ever see any problems or having problems let me know. We did have somebody booked, not through Airbnb but through another listing, through VRBO and they wanted to have outdoor reggae Festival and I thought that was awesome. They set up the stage in the backyard, they had two solid days of reggae. Now the neighbour three and she’s probably 200 yards away, she put on Facebook the video, she was quarantine because she had the COVID. But she put the video up of the reggae concert in my backyard and it was loud, but she was digging it because she had her own concert. Some of the other neighbours complained and let me know, they wanted to do the reggae thing again this year and I told them that it wasn’t a good fit for the property because they know we had some neighbours that didn’t like it. I try to be conscientious and not disturbing my neighbours. But like I said that property, it’s been in the family for generations. So most my neighbours are blood relatives, my cousins live on both across the street. So most people there, you know, we’re family, they know me.
Delia:
That’s great also! They understand about your business and they also see that you’re getting good guests as well. So I bet they like it and is there any particular strategy you use for pricing?
Jefferey Lambert:
Now with pricing, like we started with a two night minimum because it takes at least a day and a half, two days for Betsy to clean the place by herself. We learned that you have a better chance of getting someone that comes in there and try to treat it more like a cheap hotel. Two nights, three nights, and we raise the price a little bit, we get people that are, we’re finding our target clientele and again, it’s for friends and family gatherings and events, you know, birthday parties. IIt seems like right now the price range in the three night minimum, we’ve been getting exactly that, we’ve been getting family events up. Now this week, we had a family there during the weekdays, celebrating their dad’s 75th birthday. We get a lot of families from, they booked from either up north or down south in Florida and they meet halfway which is in North Carolina and they spend a week together at my house. So we’re hitting our target audience with the way we’ve got it structured right now.
Delia:
Outside of that, is there any particular thing you base your price on because, you know, there are many hosts, for example, look at the competition to put their price. And I don’t think you have much competition around there and yours is a very particular listing like you said before, so is there anything you have in mind aside of the three nights minimum to price your property?
Jefferey Lambert:
I have looked at other listings in that area and I find something that can sleep 12. Typically, they’re going to be on the lake, you know, a large lake house, but their parking is limited and again, my event parking area holds 50 cars and the driveway holds 10, so parking is not a problem at my house. As far as you know, pricing too high or too low, finding that sweet spot, so that we’re getting people that come in there and they’re gonna respect the property and not pricing ourselves out of the market so that we stay booked regularly. You know, again, I kind of compare it to three nights at the Holiday Inn Express there in Albemarle, you know, if we have three families there for three nights, that’s about the same price as my house for three nights and you can easily have three families in my house. The thing as far as pricing, you know, I’d have looked at it, maybe I could raise my price and at the end of the year taking just as much money, but not having it booked every weekend less, you know, wear and tear on the house, same amount of dollars. But then I have to take into consideration my landscape. Well, my landscapers every week, pretty much regardless, but my housekeeper, Betsy was doing it to start with, but she was diagnosed with neurological disease, so physically, she’s not able to do the cleaning. So we lucked into finding this wonderful lady named April and first started just kind of doing the days giving us a day off so we can go out of town. But once Betsy’s health declined, she started doing every cleaning for us and I want to stay on her schedule, she’s wonderful. She’s got a family that’s got a cleaning business, do house cleaning. We’ve found her through a friend, she came to look at the house and I think she priced it at 220 to do the house. Then we met with her after Betsy’s diagnosis and said “we need you to do every cleaning, can you do that?” and she said yes. Now the cleaning business, they can have their own accounts. We were her first account and right now we’re the largest account that their company has because she’s cleaning it five, six times a month. It’s not just cleaning, she stages the house, she prepares the house for the guest and she knows the house better than I do as far as where the pictures need to be and how the chairs need to be. She’ll send me a picture of a little Dean in the shade on a lamp and I’m like “yeah I did that last year, my apologies, sorry I did that”. She is the most important person on our team and if I price it higher, but she’s not working every week, I need to take keep that in consideration because I don’t want to lose her and I raised her up to 240 last year and just raised her up to 280 this year because she’s worth every penny. You know, she started just doing the basics, but now she’s doing more, you know, as far as organising our toys, then the downstairs garage, we have a whole bunch of toys that we keep, you know, cycling through every time I go shopping for supplies, in the toy aisle, a new game or something to play in the yard, we just put that downstairs for the guest. I want to stay on her schedule, so pricing myself higher and having less bookings for the same amount of money affects the people that I depend on to make this happen.
Delia:
I understand and I also admire how you meant to keep your housekeeper because cleaning is one of the most important things on Airbnb and many hosts, the guests also to know to appreciate it.
Jefferey Lambert:
Oh, a real quick story though. She’s got broken English because she’s Mexican, but she speaks really good English, it’s a little bit of an accent. Betsy and I were there and she comes up and asked me and Betsy, she about something with a pillowcase or a comforter and I looked at I said, “would you let your kids sleep on that?” and she was “oh no” and I’m like, “okay, from now on, that’s the criteria, if you wouldn’t let your family stay there or sleep on or use that bathroom, it’s not good enough”, you know. So we went and got more pillowcases or whatever it was. But we’ve got a storage now, so we’ve got backups of everything and she’ll send us pictures of the guest book now because it’s two hours from where I live to the house. So we try to still get by there once a month at least every two months just to see it and make sure and get more supplies.
Delia:
So you do kind of remote hosting as well? How had that gone?
Jefferey Lambert:
That first year Betsy cleaned it, so we were there every week, which was kind of fun, we’d get there and it’s been a couple of nights during the weekdays. I work remote, I’m an engineer for a construction management company and a lot of my works is remote, so I can work here or there. But then, once Betsy’s health started declining, we got April doing it every week. We’ve been there once since before Christmas. I’d like to go back but like I said this month is booked back to back. There’s not a night there for me to go. Go spend a day and a night there and kind of, you know, look over everything.
Delia:
Yeah, so your calendar is fully booked for April, that’s amazing! In this time being an Airbnb host, have there been any major challenges that you’ve found yourself?
Jefferey Lambert:
Well, I mentioned already the, finding that sweet spot with minimum number of nights and the price so we were attracting the clientele that we’re trying to get. And again, the idea of family get togethers friends meeting, you know, like I said we had that military group, they were retired Marine, they met out there for a long weekend, those type of events. Gatherings is what I’m trying to attract. Early on we did have, when the two nights we had a group that was rowdy, the place was really didn’t, the floor was so sticky throughout the main level of the house, I had to wear my shoes, my slippers inside because the floor was sticky. It was just nasty the way they left that, the condition of the house. But since we’ve raised to the finding that sweet spot for our target clients was number one. Number two right now was finding a quality housekeeper and calling her a cleaning lady is not good enough, she is a housekeeper she stages the house, she makes sure it’s clean, she keeps us updated. If something’s looking worn that we may not have seen. She’s vital in finding someone that can do that and you the trust is worth every penny it takes to find them. Right now I think the biggest challenge I’ve got is because I’m on VRBO and Airbnb, I do have the calendars linked, but I have yet found how to make VRBO add a day at the beginning and end of a booking automatically for cleaning or in prep time. Airbnb, it’s pretty simple, I’ve got it set up. But because I’ve got an 8am check in, that’s eight in the morning, people can check in and they don’t have to check out till 3pm. The way they typically do it, someone checks out on the 22nd, the next person can check in on the 22nd and I can’t do that because it takes at least five hours for April and her aunts to get the house ready, so I need that day. So when they book on VRBO, I’ve got to instantly go and block the days, so that they don’t get booked over.
Delia:
I see. Yeah, I’ve heard from other hosts also that they don’t like VRBO because it’s a little bit hard to use and not as trustable as Airbnb.
Jefferey Lambert:
Yes. Now I do almost all of it on my phone, but on the Airbnb app, you can go into your stats and click on your feed and tap the dot the income and it shows you your total this year in bookings. It shows each month how much is booked and your percent booking, your occupancy rate. I haven’t found that on VRBO, I can’t find that. So I’m gonna go through and manually add up all the bookings on VRBO to see what my total projection is for these total future bookings are for this year. That means when I’m going to do a large improvement at the house, you know, we’re going to be putting a kitchenette downstairs in the basement area. I designed the house for that kitchenette eventually and that’s going to take some capital and I don’t mind floating the expense if I know the bookings are there and that’s a big challenge. Another minor challenge I guess is keeping up with the supplies, I do a lot of ordering through Airbnb and other delivery startup, Amazon and other delivery services. But timing the delivery so they get there between guests and April, our housekeeper, can get it and restock whatever she needs to restock in our storage area.
Delia:
I see I understand! And lastly, are there any tips that you’d like to share for other Airbnb hosts?
Jefferey Lambert:
I have recommended doing the Airbnb thing to many of my friends, especially people that are getting close to retirement age and they’re doing more travelling and the flexibility and the options available with Airbnb, you can list it for one week a year. You can do a minimum booking, you can change your price, it’s very versatile and it’s not like you’ve got to move out of your house completely. The advice that I give them is you know there’s no reason not to try it. And the key that, I heard someone say and I believe it completely is undersell and over deliver, you know, in our listing we don’t mention that we’ve got candy drawer in the kitchen, but I’ve got a candy drawer in the kitchen full of low chocolates for the guests. We make sure it’s not between guests. And we’ve got all those toys that we don’t advertise those are surprises those are little bonuses, so when they show up, oh my gosh, there it is. We advertise we’ve got a fire pit. We don’t advertise it, we’ve got a lot of sawmill slats and wooden pallets beside the barn and they’re welcome to use to have bonfires. So we try to undersell and over deliver with all these extras after they get there.
Delia:
Yeah, that is a great tip. It’s my first time hearing about it, but I think it’s really good. I think it’s like a way to impress guests.
Jefferey Lambert:
And again, that is been more satisfying than I could have imagined. Reading these notes in our guestbook, I mean these heartfelt notes. Oh, we had adults, they were in their 40s, siblings that had never met each other. They met at my house for the first time and spent the week together and she told me the more I know about guests and what can I do to to make it more special event or a case stay for them. She mentioned it was her birthday and she never fished before. Well, I ordered a little fishing pole and had it delivered to the house while she was there, with her name on it said “happy birthday, from Jeff and Betsy”. You know it was a $20 fishing pole, but I want to do it as she was there first time fishing, first time meeting her brother.
Delia:
That was really kind of you! I’m really happy to meet a host that thinks about their guests as you do, like that’s really important.
Jefferey Lambert:
Well, I told you from the beginning, I don’t know if I’m the standard host nowadays. So I’m not doing it for extra income. You know, looking into the future, if everything continues to be as smooth as it is now. We had nine repeat guests, they changed their vacation plans, they want to come here again. When I do retire, then I could maybe start bringing in an extra couple $1,000 a month on the big months to supplement with my retirement, but more than sell the house. But right now it’s very little effort on my part. It hasn’t been a hassle at all and it’s incredibly rewarding to hear these stories and then when I go there myself to enjoy the place, it has never looked this good.
Delia:
That’s great for you. It have been a pleasure talking with you. Thank you for your time and thank you for your tips as well!
Jefferey Lambert
All right, well, thank you!
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